Heating and Air 101

It’s a tough thing to do, buying a heating and cooling system. You’ll run across a plethora of acronyms to help confuse you further. SEER ratings, AFUE percentage, EEM motors, NATE certification, ECM technology, Manual J ACCA calculations… yes, it all seems like jibberish! What we do at Jerry Kelly is try and break everything down for you as simply as possible so that you know a NATE certification is the leading certification for any HVAC technician. Still have one eyebrow lifted? Here’s a few common terms you may hear from time to time:

HVAC

This is probably the most common, since it is basically the type of service work you are looking for when it comes to keeping your house ventilated and at desirable temperatures. It stands for Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning. When you are considering a system revamp for your home, you will definitely want someone who is proficient in everything simply because it’s easier to have one organization do all the work instead of several. You wouldn’t want one doctor to sub in for another in the middle of an operation, would you?

SEER Rating

SEER stands for Seasonal Energy Efficient Ratio and measures, you guessed it, how efficient your air conditioning unit runs. It takes an A/C’s cooling units (measured in BTU’s or British Thermal Units) and divides that number by the total electrical energy output you would use in a given season (measured in watt-hours) and voila, you have your SEER rating! The higher the number, the more efficient your machine is running, which means you are helping the environment and saving some cash on utilities–bonus!

AFUE

Measuring the thermal efficiency of water heaters, boilers, and furnaces, this rating is actually an average measurement for your unit’s efficiency over the season in which it runs. AFUE stands for Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency and, since it does not instantaneously measure a device’s efficiency, is best used to calculate a combustion device’s efficiency over an entire season. Look for this when you hear someone describing a range of, let’s say, 80% – 95% efficiency.

NATE Certification

Considered the pinnacle certification in the HVAC community, the North American Technician Excellence certification is one that every service tech prides themselves on because it is not an easy one to get. Even after the achievement is reached, the technician still needs to maintain specific accreditations in order to keep the certified label. This is, without a doubt, one of the most important things to look for when you are getting a new unit or system installed in your home.

Did I forget to mention that each of our technicians are NATE certified? Not only that, but we also keep them updated on every single new advancement on the heating, cooling, and everything-air-quality landscape.

Yep, you could pretty much say we’re HVAC nerds, and we couldn’t be more proud.